My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Old Bath
The steam rose until the little colored windows were blurred.
Hinata stood at the edge of the pool in a cotton sheet from Ambrose's basket and looked at hot water for a long time.
She had not been in a bath since Nagoya.
At home, after a night shift, she used to walk to the neighborhood bathhouse at sunrise.
She would sit in the hottest tub until her bones stopped aching.
"You are crying," said Valdemar.
"It's the steam."
"It is not the steam."
"It's a little bit the steam." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "Okay, rules. In my country you wash first. Then you get in. Nobody puts soap in the bath."
"I have bathed in the Imperial pool since I was a boy."
"Then you did it wrong."
He looked at her from under his brows, with the black belt at his throat and a towel around his hips.
"Teach me," he said.
They sat on low stone stools along the wall, each with a wooden bucket, the way she remembered.
She showed him how to pour the water over his shoulders, and how to work the soap into a lather.
He copied her with a grave attention that made her want to laugh and cry at once.
Then, without thinking, he reached over and took the cake of soap from her hand.
"May I?"
She looked at him.
He was twenty-eight years old, an emperor and a prisoner, and he was holding out his hands to wash her back.
"Please," said Hinata.
He started at her shoulders.
His palms were huge and slow, and warm with the lather.
They moved down her spine in long strokes.
The wet cotton fell away from her.
He washed her arms, and her hands, and each finger.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of My Useless Tamer Skill Tamed the Emperor are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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